The Guy Code Conundrum
by muted hitokiri
Summary: AU after season 2 - Penny and Sheldon's first kiss, Leonard's POV. Note: I love slash, but this ain't it!


Leonard stared. Then he hit replay and stared some more. Then he did it again. There had to be some mistake. There was no way this was real. It was a joke, it was a trick of the light, it was...

"_Sheldon!_ Get in here!"

It was Penny and Sheldon, caught on the very same webcam he had set up the week before, in an attempted to determine once and for all whether his childhood sleep-walking problem was back. The thing had captured no sleep-walking, his own or otherwise, but Leonard found himself suddenly wishing that it had. Then, maybe, he would have been preoccupied with that, and not bored enough to flick through the days in the hope of finding something to blackmail Dr Whack-A-Doodle with, should the need one day arise, but instead stumbling across a scene he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams.

Exactly one day, twenty-one hours, nineteen minutes and forty-three seconds since the camera had been set up, Sheldon stood at his whiteboard, his back to the lens as he worked. As Leonard watched, something off-screen seemed to disturb him, and he turned his head briefly, nodding a distracted acknowledgement towards the unseen front door. After a moment, Penny appeared, her perky blonde head sauntering jauntily past Sheldon and into the kitchen, with what Leonard couldn't help but interpreted as a deliberate attempt to annoy the his roommate by invading his personal space. She went for the fridge, and Sheldon, suitably baited, turned from his work and sniped something at her. With no sound recording, Leonard couldn't hear the specifics of their exchange, but it didn't matter – he'd seen them engage in the same dynamic a thousand times before. The argument went on for a few more rounds, not aggressively, but in that friendly, almost siblingly way they had, Sheldon getting sucked in to the point of forgetting about his whiteboard and moving into the kitchen while Penny poured herself a glass of juice. So far, business as usual.

And then, all of a sudden, it was anything but. From the camera's vantage point, perched on the desk next to the laptop, it seemed like everything happened at once: Her glass empty, Penny leaned past Sheldon to set it on the counter behind him, so close that even Leonard could see that she had to be brushing his sleeve with her arm. For a moment, neither appeared to realise, as they kept up their half-hearted sniping match, and then they both seemed to notice at once. They froze in the same instant, wide eyes locked on each other. And then came the part that Leonard, despite having watched the video three times and counting, still couldn't quite wrap his head around: Penny, recovering from the moment of shock, instead of pulling back and letting Sheldon have his space back like any sane person, pushed forward. Slowly, carefully, as though afraid to spook Sheldon, or possibly herself, she leaned closer to him, pushing herself up as high as she could go, and pressed her mouth against his.

Even from this distance, Leonard could see Sheldon freeze, his spine going even more rigid than it had been, if that was possible. His hands were behind him, but Leonard would be willing to bet a mint condition first pressing of The Amazing Spider-Man that he was gripping the counter so hard that his knuckles had gone past white and were currently working on invisibility. Penny, though, either didn't notice, or didn't care. She didn't move, keeping her mouth gently but firmly pressed against his. It took a long second, maybe two, and then the part that convinced Leonard that he really had been sleep-walking and had hit his head really, really badly the night before happened: Sheldon's eyes, which had been wide open and staring wildly into Penny's hair up to this point, flickered closed. The tendons in his throat loosened and he relaxed, just a little, just enough to incline his head a fraction to better meet hers. Penny, apparently encouraged, laid a light hand on his upper arm, and somehow Sheldon's hands were no longer behind him, but hovering awkwardly at Penny's sides, finally coming to rest hesitantly on her waist and elbow, and suddenly the whole thing looked a lot less precarious and they were _kissing_, really kissing, tentatively but with real passion underlying it, and-

Leonard hit the pause button, fighting to keep his blood from boiling right out of his ears.

"Sheldon?!" But measured, precise steps were already closing in on the desk.

"What is it? And there's no need for you to keep yelling, you know, given the density of these walls and the unblemished state of my auditory systems-" Sheldon's long shadow loomed over the laptop even as he babbled. Leonard ignored him, gripping the edge of the chair as he struggled to keep his voice even.

"That's great," he interrupted finally, spinning to face the taller man. For a moment, Leonard had to wonder what his face looked like, because Sheldon, for quite possibly the first time in their entire acquaintance, took one look at him and fell silent mid-sentence. Leonard pushed on:

"Do you want to tell me what the hell this is?"

"What what is?" Sheldon arched a questioning eyebrow at him, managing for once in his life to not only realise that his best friend was miserably, but looking like he actually gave a damn. Somehow, that just made it worse. Without a word, Leonard turned and hit play. On the screen, tiny-Penny and tiny-Sheldon were rapidly getting comfortable with each other. There was silence for what seemed like an eternity, and then:

"Oh. That."

Tiny-Sheldon brought an arm up across tiny-Penny's back, pressing her firmly against his chest, and Leonard pressed pause. He turned back to his roommate. Sheldon was still staring hard at the screen, something unreadable flickering in the cool blue eyes.

"Well?!"

Sheldon tore his gaze away from his miniature self, frozen in time, and refocused on Leonard. For a moment, his face looked almost as if it would settle into that expression of innocent curiosity he got when he was so far away from understanding that he didn't even realise there was something to understand, and Leonard swore privately that, if the bastard answered with 'well, what?', he would punch his arrogant face in. Maybe he would find circuits in there and prove Raj right, he thought bitterly. It would certainly explain a lot.

Sheldon didn't give him a chance to find out. He met Leonard's gaze with typical clinical detachment, but there was nothing innocent or curious there. His jaw was tense and there was a hardness there that Leonard wasn't used to seeing, a steeliness behind the blue that hadn't been there before.

"That was a kiss," Sheldon said at last. "Between myself and Penny. Last Tuesday at about four pm, if memory serves."

His voice was even, not betraying even the slightest hint of emotion as he imparted the bland, factual data. In spite of himself, Leonard felt a surge of disappointment momentarily swallow up his fury. He pushed it away, angry with himself – after all, what had he expected? Remorse? Defiance? Something, anything that showed even the least bit of interest in what had happened? Mentally, Leonard shook himself: He'd known the man for long enough to know that expecting anything but fact from Sheldon was pointless. He forced himself back to the topic at hand, feeling fresh rage flow through him as the thought hit him.

"I can see that," he all but growled, breathing through his nose to keep from yelling. "_Why_ were you kissing Penny?"

That got him, though fuck if Leonard could understand why. The immaculate façade seemed to shatter, and for a moment his roommate looked almost unsure of himself – a momentous event in itself. His head drooped ever so slightly and he dropped his eyes, and for a second Leonard could swear that he had forgotten that Leonard was even there as he thought, hard.

"I- don't know," he admitted finally, and when he lifted his eyes to Leonard's, there was a flicker of genuine confusion there that almost made Leonard feel sorry for him. Almost. Then it was gone, replaced by the objective observer once again. "It was an isolated event. I haven't been able to gather enough data to draw any useful conclusions about it."

"Oh." Leonard didn't know what to say to that. Part of him, the part that was jealous and hurt and helpless to fix it was still spoiling for a fight, but he could feel his anger abating already. If it had been Howard, or Koothrappali, things would have been different: He would have given vent to his pain, justified or not, at seeing someone he considered one of his three best friends in the entire world going behind his back with the woman he had wanted since the first time he had laid eyes on her. There would have been an argument, a blow-up, followed either by apologies and reconciliation or slamming doors and more pain. But this wasn't Howard, or Koothrappali, this was Sheldon. Yelling at him was pointless, because he couldn't see that anything momentous had happened, let alone that he had done anything wrong. It was Princess Panchali all over again.

"Was that all? Because I have a semi-read issue of the new Flash waiting to become fully read in my bedroom."

Leonard sighed. He could say no. He could tell Sheldon that he was hurt. He could explain why. And Sheldon wouldn't understand, not really, but he would still be sorry, because, despite what it might look like 90% of the time, he did understand pain and really didn't want his friends to feel it.

He threw up his hands and flopped into the chair.

"I guess so," he agreed finally, unable to talk himself into staying angry. How could he? The sequence of events here was obvious: Penny, for reasons of her own, had kissed him, and pure biological impulse had made him kiss back. That was it, nothing more to say. To Sheldon, the kiss had probably been no more note-worthy than his morning bowel movement. He gave a wave of dismissal, and out of the corner of his eye saw Sheldon turn to go. He hadn't even made it to the door when Leonard stopped him.

"Sheldon wait," he called, knowing already now that he was going to regret this, but unable to help himself. He had to know. "Why was it an isolated event? I mean, Penny must have had a reason, and you sure looked like you were enjoying yourself…" He trailed off, grimacing at the bitter taste the words left in his mouth as he gestured vaguely to the screen. "Why not do it again?"

Across the room, he heard Sheldon stop, turn, take a couple of steps back towards him. Leonard looked up, and found his roommate staring down at him with an expression of baffled incomprehension, as though Leonard had just suggested he eat Thai food on pizza night.

"Because," he began tightly, and suddenly there was a fleck of unexpected hardness, of something Leonard didn't recognise, behind the disbelief, "friends don't do that to each other."

Leonard stared, unable to do anything else. It was a good thing he was already sitting down, he decided, because otherwise he might just have fallen over in shock, and having your whole world view shaken while concussed was probably not a good idea. Opposite him, Sheldon was still studying him carefully, head cocked to one side as he studied Leonard's face, as though still trying to what the hell Leonard was thinking. And failing, by the looks of it. Finally, when all Leonard managed to do was pull his mouth closed to keep from catching flies, Sheldon seemed to give up. With an exaggerated roll of his eyes, he turned on his heel and was gone. Through the shock, Leonard thought he heard his bedroom door close with just a little more force than was strictly necessary.

**

Leonard didn't know what to think. He knew what he ought to think – making out with the girl your best friend had been lusting after ever since they'd met definitely fell under the heading of Just Not Done. Even if Sheldon was too out there to really be held accountable, the Guy Code had still been broken, and Leonard still ought to be sitting out here, stewing in a murky soup of jealousy and pain. He had, in fact, been well on his way to doing just that, before Sheldon had pulled his little hat trick. Now, though...

Now, all he could think about was the look on his roommate's face when he'd admitted that he didn't understand how he'd wound up kissing their neighbour. He'd looked confused, and oddly vulnerable in a way Leonard had never seen before. There had been a rawness there, carefully hidden away as soon as it appeared, but there nevertheless. And suddenly, Leonard was a lot less sure of his larval theory.

**

_knockknock_

"Sheldon? Can I come in?" Some muffled rustling from behind the door, and then the reply:

"I suppose, if you must."

Gently, Leonard nudged the door open and stepped inside. Sheldon sat cross-legged at the foot of his bed, positioned exactly in the middle of the line that split the comforter in two. A comic book lay open on his lap, and he stared up at Leonard with an expression that wasn't quite belligerent, but certainly getting there.

"This is the second time in thirty-two minutes you've interrupted my reading," he pointed out, not bothering to hide his irritation. "What do you want?"

"Sheldon-" Leonard began, and then stopped. What could he say? What did he want to say? Too late, it occurred to him that this was probably the sort of thing one should work out before the big moment, not during. He wandered along the bookcase, eyes trailing over the meticulously kept figures it held as he tried to think and came up blank. Finally Sheldon's cool voice broke in:

"Yes, Leonard?" he shot back archly. "Can I help you, or did you simply come in here to admire my admittedly superb collection of Green Lantern memorabilia?"

Leonard made a decision.

"Do you want to do it again?" he heard himself ask suddenly, spinning to face his friend before he could lose his nerve. "Kiss Penny, I mean. Do you want to do it again?"

The emotions flickered across Sheldon's face too fast to recognise. Leonard thought he saw something that looked almost like desire in there, though, before the sharp features finally settled into frosty neutrality.

"Are you still harping on that?" he asked, in a tone that warned against a wrong answer. "I told you, the point is moot, given that-"

"I know, I know," Leonard cut him off, and it was a mark of the turmoil raging beneath the surface that Sheldon let him. " 'Friends don't do that to each other'. You said, and I appreciate that, I really do." And he did, he realised. It was easy to fall into the trap of believing Sheldon to be a total egomaniac, and in many ways he was, but the fact was that, when he was told something was unacceptable within a friendship, he would go to ridiculous lengths to avoid doing it. Somehow, that helped.

"But," he went on, not letting himself stop in case he wouldn't be able to start again. "if we weren't friends-"

"If we weren't friends, I would likely never have spoken to Penny in anything but a neighbourly capacity."

Leonard pinched the bridge of his nose, but refused to be daunted. He'd known Sheldon for long enough to know how to play his game.

"True. Okay, forget that part. Just, say that I was okay with you kissing her. Say I wouldn't mind if you broke the code here. Would you want to do it again?"

Sheldon opened his mouth, and for a second Leonard was afraid he was going to make another one of his typical, nonsensical protests – '_I can't forget_', for example, or '_it doesn't matter, rules are rules and you have no authority to change them_'. Instead, though, no sound came out, and after a long moment of silence, he closed it again, almost as an afterthought. He looked straight ahead, staring unseeing at the colourful titles that flashed at him from the shelves.

"I- Maybe," he admitted finally. "If you agreed, and Penny accepted… I might perhaps like to kiss her again."

Leonard let out a long breath through his nose, something inside him deflating – he had been afraid of that. He looked at his roommate, still staring hard at his books as he thought. Part of him wanted to turn and walk out. He was under no obligation here – as per every friendship rule known to man, he'd seen Penny first and was therefore free to continue to moon over her for as long as he pleased, with no interference from anyone who called themselves friend. No one could blame him if he chose to leave the status quo in tact, one errant kiss notwithstanding. Sheldon would accept that, he had no doubt, wouldn't even question it. And if it had been anyone else, he was sure he would have done just that. But-

This was Sheldon. _Sheldon_. Sheldon, who looked for all the world like the world's biggest twelve year old. Sheldon, who was arguably one of the greatest minds of his generation (not something that needed to be said out loud, but even so), but couldn't navigate a trip to the supermarket without a guidebook. Sheldon, who was so socially stunted that he could have perky, willing grad students fawning all over him, without ever having the slightest idea of what they were doing. Sheldon, who was, underneath it all, an honestly sweet person and Leonard's best friend in all the world, and who, in spite of that, would almost certainly end up growing old isolated and alone, because he didn't even realise he needed anything else. And because even being Sheldon's friend was a pain and a half, and no sane woman would ever want to saddle herself with that rather spectacular bundle of neuroses.

Except that, now that Leonard thought about it, Penny sort of did. Kind of. She got annoyed with Sheldon. She told him off when he insulted her, or at least when he did it on purpose. She stood up to him, refusing to knuckle under and let him have his way just because it was easier. She pushed and prodded at him, shoving him with various degrees of success out of his comfort zone just because she could, seeming to take pleasure in his ensuing discomfort. But she kept coming back even so. She kept sitting next to him on the couch when she thrashed them all at Halo, kept asking his advice on everything from business to relationships, kept trying to see things from his point of view, no matter how warped, even as she fought to get him to see hers.

And Sheldon kept letting her. That was the really surprising part. He grumbled and complained – and, on occasion, plotted – but he let her nevertheless. Sometimes, if you looked closely enough, there were even hints that he might actually appreciate her company – Leonard doubted very much that the great Sheldon Cooper would ever lower himself to gluing rhinestones on hair accessories for anyone else, ever. But he had done it for Penny, had done it cheerfully and enthusiastically as though he had never done anything else. Because it was Penny.

Leonard knew that his friend was not asexual. His disinterest in sex stemmed not from a legitimate orientation, but from his inability to relate to the rest of the human race and, by extension, his inability to be interested in them as anything but objects of study. That was changing, one itty bitty increment at a time, as he learned how to live in a world he didn't understand, but he would never be anything even approaching normal, and Leonard suspected that the general population would continue to confuse and mystify him too much to arouse any desire for closeness to them.

Except for Penny. Penny had, against all reason, pushed herself by pure force of will through the brittle, tangled mess of Sheldon's mind and into a soft spot that Leonard was beginning to suspect might be his heart. At this point, it was undeniable that Sheldon cared about the girl, deeply and honestly, even if he didn't always understand it or know what to do with it. Leonard had never suspected his feelings for her to be sexual in any way, and even now he had a hard time believing anything else, but that kiss had shown that, if nothing else, they certainly _could_ be, and now-

Leonard closed his eyes, letting out a breath as he felt his stomach tighten. Now, he was faced with the choice between seeing the woman he had lusted after for almost three years in the arms of his best friend – albeit more than likely temporarily – or denying said best friend what was very likely the only chance at a relationship – at love – he would ever get. Part of him had to bite back a bitter smile, and wonder what the Guy Code would have to say about that.

Leonard rubbed his temple, hoping against hope to ward off the headache he could feel budding there. He had known life wasn't fair since the day he had realised that Billy Evans' Mom was more willing to hug him than his own, but this really took the cake. He thought about Penny – how pretty she was, her smile, how it made him feel when she brushed past him in the hall. He thought about the look on her face when Sheldon had hugged her last Christmas, how surprised and pleased and proud she'd been, and chose.

"Okay, well," he heard himself say, turning his gaze back to where Sheldon sat, unmoving. "For the record, I don't mind if you and Penny want to, you know, date or whatever. It's fine."

On the bed, Sheldon's eyes narrowed, his face growing intent as he studied Leonard in that way he did when he knew he should be picking up on something, but wasn't sure what.

"Why?" he asked. Leonard shrugged awkwardly, and wished for about the billionth time he had chosen a roommate without a whistling embargo. Then they could have fought over the hot girl next door like normal people.

"Because," he began uncomfortably, forcing himself to say the words he knew were true. "I know you guys have gotten really close lately, and it's not like I have some kind of claim on her. Let's face it, we've been neighbours for almost three years, it's not like I haven't had my shot, and then some."

It was a sign of the struggle going on behind the blue eyes that Sheldon didn't even try to supply the exact length of time since Penny had moved in. He was still staring hard at Leonard, as though not sure how he was supposed to interpret that. Leonard made himself stand still until he was done.

"Oh," he said finally.

"So, um, maybe you should go talk to her?"

Sheldon, though, gave no sign of having heard anything. He was back to staring at the wall now, but there was an intent expression on his angular features. Leonard could practically hear the wheels turning in that remarkable brain of his as he tried to puzzle out this new development, tried to frame it in a way he could make sense of. Leonard gave up, and retreated to his room.

**

It wasn't until over an hour later, when Leonard was deeply immersed in his favourite classic Iron Man arc and carefully reminding himself that Tony Stark didn't need Pepper Potts to be happy either, that he heard Sheldon's door click open and, moments after, the front door slam shut. Leonard closed his eyes, let out a long breath, and wondered if he could still call Leslie at this hour.


End file.
